What Does Cow Say? (Scholastic lift-the-flap) ~ Mother's Day Blog Hop

In celebration of my spring release, What Does Cow Say?(Scholastic), I'm giving away this cute barn carrying case, small plush cow, and an autographed copy of the book. This rhyming lift-the-large-flap board book is mega-sturdy and bigger than many board books at 7" x 8.5".

Two steps to enter:

1. Drop a comment with a creative (g-rated) guess regarding what a cow might say other than the obvious.2. Click to "follow" this blog and/or friend me on Facebook.USA only, Contest runs May 5-8. I'll post the winner here in comments. Good luck!Giveaway #2 See my other Blog Hop in the post below.

Story scoop: These farm animals have big mouths! When the sun came up, Duck went Quack which woke his neighbor, Cow, who went MOO, which woke Rooster who went Cock-a-doodle-doo. . . As each animal awakens, totz can guess what it says and open its big-flap beak, snout, or mouth to read its signature sound. The final spread shows a child waking up--with open arms and a final HOORAY! to welcome the day!

Art scoop: Instead of a manuscript, I submitted this 2-page dummy to Scholastic/Cartwheel for consideration. All the mouths had working flaps taped over them, so they'd lift to reveal the animal sound below. A lot goes into creating these seemingly uncomplicated books. For instance, the title and some of the text changed during the editing process. And as you can see, artist Jannie Ho made the book way cuter than my proposal.

Lucky me to have Jannie illustrate this book! She studied illustration at Parsons School of Design in NYC, and was a designer at Nickelodeon, Scholastic, and associate art director at TIME Magazine for Kids before becoming a full-time illustrator. Wow!

We read a story at bedtime and when my daughter and I get carried away and drag out/postpone going to sleep, when we get to the part where it says, "And the cow says......" my husband cuts in and says, instead of "moo", "Shhhhhh". Of course, that results in peals of giggles.

So if my cow is going to say something other than "Moo", I'll have to choose "Shhhhh" because he wants the girl cows to be quiet and to go to sleep!